Chapter Two: Mirror
He enters Orihime Inoue's room. She is standing in her characteristic pose, looking up at the barred window.
"Woman," he says from the doorway. His voice sounds louder than he had anticipated. She jumps a little. She hasn't even heard him come in. How pathetic. So few defences.
"Ulq—"
"I have something." He reaches into his pocket, pulling out the mirror. He wants to say something else: "Aizen-sama's orders." Mentira. Why.
"Yes," she said, looking down at her clasped hands.
Accustomed to sonido, now, she doesn't gasp or startle -as she had done so often, and so annoyingly, at the beginning. "Take it," he says, now at her side and extending the object to her.
She obediently receives it, but says nothing.
"Have you nothing to say?" Why does he want her to say something? He is not accustomed to being puzzled by his own words. Unpleasant.
Compliantly, her eyes on the floor. "Thank Aizen…-sama… for me."
He should turn and leave her now, but he cannot stop himself.
"Does it please you?"
"Yes." She doesn't even look at the object in her hands.
"Do you know what it is?"
At this, Orihime raises her eyes to meet his. She laughs.
"Of course I know what it is, silly. Who wouldn't?"
That is enough. Her eyes dark yet clear, transparent, deep. He turns to leave, but then turns back. The laugh.
"I—Aizen-sama—thought you might like to see a human face. That it would bring you peace."
A mistake. Her eyes narrow and her fists clench, pathetically. "A human face? I want to see -?" And she starts to weep again. "Peace—." She collapses on her knees with her face in her hands. I want to see their faces… I love… It's not about …"
A failure. Rage at Gin Ichimaru rises within the espada as he stands before the woman's shuddering form. Why did he accept the mirror? It has only made the woman lose control again. But she laughed.
"Stop crying. It's depressing. "
How can she cry so much? Is there some never-dry fountain in her body from which these absurd spells are generated? Here, in this desert, she is like—like an insanely overflowing river. River.
Suddenly he feels an unwonted heat in his head, uncanny—he isn't sure whether it was heat, now, or sound, like-a buzzing. He can sense that hot river in her body… tears gushing to the surface, the flow of liquid within her, the tributaries of throbbing veins and arteries underneath the thin, pale skin—he has seen them—and at the centre of it all, that….
How he ends up on his knees beside her he knows not. He lifts her head to look at her face. It is already red and swollen again, and a vein dully twitches at her temple. Their eyes meet. She shudders.
Where her warm chin touches his hand he can feel her life. It maddens him. He licks one teary eye slowly, experimentally. She doesn't move—doesn't even close the eye as his tongue explores its warm salty wetness. From corner to corner. Lagrimal. Then the other. She holds them—open. Then he drops his cool black lips to her throat and feels it, thick and warm, fragile and relentless, against his thirsty mouth. It is there. Against his will his eyes widen, then close. El pulso.
El corazón.
Arráncalo. El corazón.
The heat in his head is intolerable now and his ears are roaring. He can think of nothing but escape.
He rises to his feet. His exterior betrays nothing.
"Tend to yourself, woman. I will return with nourishment when necessary."
"Ulquiorra." She reaches toward him with one hand.
He wheels and leaves the room as quickly as possible. As he closes the door behind him, a wail. He hears a thin crack as the mirror hits the floor.
He pauses outside the door, listening to her sobs. Then he walks away.
Mentira= lie
Lagrimal= eye corner, tear duct
El pulso. El corazón. Arráncalo. El corazón= The pulse. The heart. Remove [tear] it. The heart.
